This invention relates generally to the field of wireless communication systems, and more particularly to a method and system for providing location-based services efficiently on a wireless communication network.
Wireless communication networks operate to communicate information, such as voice signals, images, electronic files or data, video signals, and the like, to and from a wireless communication device using radio waves. For example, the wireless communication network may include a communication system using analog, digital cellular, or PCS communication systems, a satellite communication system, a two-way radio communication system, a paging system, and the like.
A wireless communication network typically includes a network of base stations that can communicate with the various wireless communication devices. Examples of wireless communication devices include mobile phones and other telephony devices, radios, personal digital assistants (PDAs), palmtops, notebook computers, and other devices that have wireless communication capability. Each base station provides communication services within its respective network zone, such that the network of base stations provides a number of network zones that can cover a large geographic area. The network zones and their respective coverage areas occasionally change as base stations are improved and added within the wireless communication network. In the United States, cellular communication networks now cover nearly all of the United States, with many of the base stations now providing digital and PCS communication systems.
More recently, a number of location-based service applications have been implemented or proposed for wireless communication networks. Examples of such existing or proposed location-based service applications include: emergency service, location-dependent call routing, location-dependent billing, location tracking, and the like. In emergency applications, the call and the exact location of the wireless communication device may be routed to the closest provider of emergency services, thus reducing emergency response time and possibly saving lives. In location-dependent billing applications, different billing rates may be charged to a customer for operating the wireless communication device in different geographical areas. Each location-based service application utilizes the location of the wireless communication device.
Location systems sometimes utilize conventional system reference location methods for determining or characterizing the location of the wireless communication device. Such reference location methods operate by relating the location of the wireless communication device to a network zone, e.g., cell or cell sector of the wireless communication network. However, mobile operators face specific and real problems with network resources that may hinder widespread deployment of commercial location-based services. For example, consider a situation where a mobile operator is offering a mix of location-based services to its subscribers. The application mix includes services like fleet tracking, child finder, push advertising, and traffic alerts. These applications generally would like to be notified with location updates when the subscriber is moving, and perhaps with greater frequency when the subscriber is moving more rapidly.
One approach for providing location updates is to do polling, either by the application or by a location management program. Now consider a situation where one million subscribers have signed up for the location-based services and the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the application mix are, on average, that each subscriber's location is polled every 5 minutes. Based on these considerations, this equates to about 200,000 location determination transactions per minute or 3333 transactions per second (TPS). Also, there is typically considerable latency associated with determining a location with technology like A-GPS. Therefore, the applications (and perhaps a human operator) are polling frequently and waiting a long time.
In a typical case, continuous polling may use resources unnecessarily because large percentage of these location transactions may be unnecessary because the subscriber has not moved. For example, workers may be sitting in an office for several hours, plumbers on a job for hours at a time, or the like. The subscriber may be so distant from a point of interest (for push advertising, for example) that there is no need to do a location fix at all.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a method and system for efficient location determination and reporting capabilities in wireless networks, especially to save network resources such as radio frequency bandwidth and server capacity, and battery life in the wireless communication devices.